I know the answer is IT DEPENDS but in my role as a change manager I am ensuring that a change activity is submitted in good time, have mention of right config items, have abiility to implement, verify and back out, are tested to business satisfaction, have no conflicts with other change activities, have non functional requirements (fitness for use) in place. Also have the ability to penalise the offenders (who's changes fail) by putting them under added scrutiny.

I engage in the change process 14 days prior to the implementation whilst the change life cycle spans across months i.e. from time of its inception.

I wonder if I am doing enough. Any thoughts?

regards,

Vivek
"the only statistics you can trust are those you falsified yourself"
Winston Churchill

what do you report to management ?
Do you conduct CSI on the process
Do you have failed change reviews
have you expanded the scope of Change Management in the organisation
Has your process been the subject of audits and if so did you pass

What about Release Management and its relationship
What about incident & problem mgmt interaction
What about Service Delivery of new services - are they incorporated -

How many changes are done in a period
Are they all CAB scoped or some standard and minor or BAU ?

You should not rest on your laurels

Think of having a bunch of 5 -7 years in your house.
You expect them to be noisy @ play - which you control
What do you expect when they are very quiet during the day.....

what do you report to management ? My report is aimed at driving behaviors. They include how many changes failed with their root cause. How many Emergency changes and why? Changes that resulted in outage with their root cause. Managers who have approved exceptions to the laid change management norms (name and shame)
Do you conduct CSI on the process - We did a Maturity Review of the Process. This review was aimed at benhmarking my process as against other regional change management teams of my organization. Have not performed a Continual Service Improvement and no idea where are how to start?
Do you have failed change reviews - There is a failed change review. However, in my organization it is performed by Problem Management as failed changes often result in service outage/s

have you expanded the scope of Change Management in the organisation - We tried to expand the scope of change management beyond IT. This has not worked because of couple of limitations. 1. The change process is considered to slow down the changes performed by Operations and 2. The CA tool that we use was seen as unfriendly by departments outside IT.

Has your process been the subject of audits and if so did you pass - We have not been audited directly but Audit keeps coming back to IT where they check the efficiency and effectiveness of change process that IT uses. We have not have any unfavorable remarks from Audit.

What about Release Management and its relationship - Release Management is fairly independent of Change Management. We in Change Management primarily provide change governance while release management are seen as executors

What about incident & problem mgmt interaction - We form a part of a Problem mgmt led Daily Call that deals with Incidents (Outages) on the previous day. If the Incident is caused by a change we highlight the issues with the change and make the teams document the learning lessons for future releases. No interaction with Incident management.

What about Service Delivery of new services - are they incorporated - They are incorporated in terms of ensuring that the new services are both fit for purpose and fit for use. We govern a process meant for IT Service Acceptance which deals with non functional requirements for new services such as Service Availability Targets, Monitoring, Alerting, Information Security and so on. We ensure that the people responsible for the above non functional requirements sign off the readiness levels of the new service.

How many changes are done in a period - Organization wise it is over 4k changes per week. In the small region I support its approx 200 changes per wekk
Are they all CAB scoped or some standard and minor or BAU ? Only High Risk changes are brought to the CAB. All other are reviewed outside the CAB. Relevant approvers on the changes are auto populated on the change record in most cases. We descope certain type of changes from Change standards and such changes can be submitted in fewer days, will have fewer approvers and have fewer tasks. Changes which have a history of no disruption are brought to this category.

What do you expect when they are very quiet during the day.....I have a 6 year old son so have seen the din that he and his friend create. If they are very quiet, I will probably snatch away their ipads. Can't envisage any other scenario when they can go quiet. Leave this for you to anser

regards,

Vivek
"the only statistics you can trust are those you falsified yourself"
Winston Churchill